We're Just Mice
by cresselia8themoon
Summary: Pinky and the Brain cope with an unexpected tragedy in the lab. Their lifespan is short, sometimes even shorter.


**A/N: This is my first time writing for Pinky and the Brain! I was inspired after reading skimmingsurface's and SylviaW1991's fics because their characterizations are just phenomenal. Hope you enjoy!**

They liked torturing him with aggravating experiments. Another insipid maze that Brain could navigate with his eyes closed. The only deviation from the norm was that a normal mouse had been selected to run the maze with him instead of Pinky.

There wasn't much of a difference between Pinky and a normal mouse's usual finishing times though.

The lab tech roughly deposited Brain and the other mouse at the start of the maze, then rushed off to chat with a female coworker. Several mounted video cameras were stationed at the junctions, but the lights along their sides remained off.

They weren't being observed and there would be no proper recordings either. The tech would have to falsify his results. It was unprofessionalism to the highest degree.

"A complete waste of time," Brain grumbled. He itched to double-check his calculations in time for tonight's plan. His estimations needed to be flawless, otherwise it could prove to be their downfall when he used humanity's desire to protect endangered species against them.

"Come, Pinky," he called out of habit, not fully expecting Pinky to follow him. His wayward associate would inevitably find the ceiling fascinating and stray off the correct path.

His words were met with a feeble squeak, and Brain suddenly found it disconcerting to be in a maze where he wouldn't hear Pinky's strange verbal patterns. Perhaps he was relying too much on muscle memory. The other mouse sniffed the air and shuffled away, disappearing around a corner.

Brain headed in the opposite direction. He knew better than to rely on the cheese scent, which would disappear in a few minutes once his nose became desensitized to it. If Pinky were here, he'd be able to identify the type of cheese by smell alone. Brain only knew how to scent rotten cheese because Pinky would ingest it without regard for potential food poisoning.

Pinky, Pinky, Pinky. He still managed to be an annoyance even without his physical presence!

"Out of sight, out of mind," Brain muttered, though the phrase didn't seem applicable when Pinky was involved. "Concentrate on the plan."

First, the emotional story. He and Pinky would appeal to the National Wildlife Federation and present themselves as the last of the _mus musculus intelligentus_ subspecies. They'd narrowly escaped being crushed under a bulldozer tearing down the forests of Northern California at ages too young to be separated from their parents. Banding together to survive, they taught themselves how to forage until a scientist caught them in a trap for research. They were taken to ACME Labs and genetically enhanced after enduring numerous cruel experiments. Finally, they decided to use their newfound ability to communicate with humans and share their story.

Once those seeds were planted, he'd allow their story to be circulated across The New York Times, National Geographic, and all the other major news and magazine organizations. Humans would be on their knees, begging to see the famous _mus musculus intelligentus_ duo!

Then Brain would reveal the final stage: demand justice from the United Nations for the wrongs done to their species. And the only justice he'd accept was in the form of being crowned world leader. He wouldn't settle for anything less.

Perhaps he'd create a labyrinth designed to stimulate people's minds once he was ruler. He could easily create a far better maze than the ones he was forced to endure.

The pathways were predictable as always. It only took one left turn and two more rights before he reached the end of the maze. The two cheese balls weren't attached to any electrical wires this time, but Brain disliked eating food used as an incentive for completing a task. He was a sentient creature and would never lower himself to baser instincts.

He couldn't help but entertain the idea of smuggling one of the cheese balls back to the cage. Pinky would be exuberant and prattle on about how it was the best cheese he'd eaten in his life even though he ate cheese whenever it was available to him.

Brain quickly pushed that image out of his mind. Normal food pellets didn't have much nutritional value. Pinky was just eating an adequate source of calcium. It was vital to keep his energy level up so he could participate in their quests for world domination.

He settled against the cardboard wall, resigning himself to being stuck until the scientists clocked out for the day. Assuming someone bothered to remove him from the maze, of course. Not that he'd have any trouble finding his own way out.

"Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium," Brain recited. He had to occupy his mind somehow. His current environment was unsuitable for inspiring plans.

He'd just gotten to bismuth on his second recitation of the periodic table when he heard the angry footfalls. A livid red face loomed above him, and Brain only had a split second to recognize the incompetent lab tech before a sweaty hand seized his entire head and jerked him upward.

Brain twisted in the man's vicegrip, attempting to bite the thumb so he could make his displeasure known. But his teeth snapped at empty air instead, his body slamming into a hard counter. Slightly dazed, Brain took a moment to rub his temples, clearing the black spots in his peripheral vision.

An irritatingly familiar cry of "narf" brought his senses back completely, just in time to see the normal mouse dangling by its tail, oddly limp and quiet in the lab tech's hand.

The lab tech stomped over to a wastebasket and dropped the mouse into the plastic lining below. The mouse's head flopped at an angle that shouldn't have been possible with its anatomy.

Brain gripped the edge of the countertop as the lab tech threw scrap paper over the mouse's unmoving body.

It was dead from a broken neck, a barbaric and senseless murder that would receive no justice.

The lab tech retreated into a different section of the lab, as if he hadn't just committed an act of animal cruelty.

And a heartbroken sob from across the room told Brain he hadn't been the only witness.

O – O – O – O – O

"_Don't get too attached. That one's getting inoculated with a virus tomorrow." _

"_Useful as snake food, not much else." _

"_They're just mice. We can always get more." _

The murderer had gone home. The other scientists had clocked out hours ago, unaware of the dead mouse buried in a heap of scrap paper without a shred of dignity.

Brain clutched the pencil, writing out a series of linear equations and engrossing himself in the familiar letters and numbers.

Equations were simple. Logical questions with logical solutions. Patterns that were set, established, and unable to be proven wrong.

Numbers didn't have emotions.

Which was precisely the reason Brain wanted to deal with numbers before he had to deal with the living antithesis to logic and objectivity.

But nightfall was approaching fast, the last of the sun's rays disappearing over the horizon. He couldn't waste more time thinking about the corpse of a rodent he never knew.

Unlock the cage. Collect Pinky. Review plan. Bop Pinky for interrupting explanation. Implement plan.

Brain mentally repeated the simple steps as he retrieved his notebook and a paperclip, ignoring how he couldn't hear his cagemate running on the squeaky wheel. He usually told Pinky to be quiet several times by now. But there hadn't been a reason to say it once tonight.

He was annoyed by both the presence and absence of Pinky's background noise, and the paradox confused and bothered him.

Brain approached the cage with his paperclip. Pinky's ear twitched, but his gaze remained on the small garbage bin.

Pinky had the perfect vantage point to see everything in the room. His posture was hunched, his usual cheer replaced by an unnatural melancholic demeanor.

Brain was supposed to be the melancholy one. Never Pinky. That wasn't how their friend…ahem, _associative _relationship worked.

Forcing himself to think about the plan, Brain straightened one end of the paperclip and jammed it into the keyhole, carefully listening for the soft click.

"Pinky," Brain called as the cage door swung open. "It's time to go over tonight's plan."

Pinky jumped, a hand thrown over his chest in shock. His blue eyes were round and shiny with tears, the fur around his cheeks damp.

His appearance took Brain aback too, and they stared at each other for an excruciatingly long time.

After what seemed like an eternity, Pinky finally broke the silence with an agonizing wail, throwing himself at Brain at a speed that even light would've envied.

"Ba-Brain! I thought you were a goner!" Pinky cried, winding his lanky body around Brain and clinging so tightly that it felt like he was being crushed by a furry boa constrictor. Tears spilled onto Brain's head, and he quickly flattened his ears so the moisture didn't slide into his auditory canals. "That…that mean ol' techie was super mad and it wasn't the fun fun silly-willy type of mad either! Layla told him no, and he said she owed him cause he helped her carry stuff and then the girls walked out all huffy. Then he stomped around for a while and plucked you and the other mouse up like spring chickens. The other mouse's head flip-flopped all over the place. Poit, if my head did that I would be dizzier than a whirlywind!"

Pinky's ramble dissolved into syllables one could only find in a Scrabble dictionary. Realizing Pinky had a sort of loose grasp on the situation but was barely coherent, Brain decided he needed to take control now before the blubbering proved too much.

He glanced at his notebook, the numbered steps open and inviting, but he'd never hammer his plan through Pinky's genetically modified skull in his current emotional state.

"Pinky, cease your babbling this instant or I shall be forced to hurt you," Brain managed to choke out despite Pinky's iron grip on his entire body. Slowly, Pinky released him, but kept close. Brain inhaled deeply, his lungs screaming for precious oxygen. "Just for the record, your head can't reproduce those motions and should never be capable of it while you breathe."

Pinky blinked. "Were we recording?"

Brain sighed, grabbing Pinky's nose and tugging him down so that they were eye level. "I was preoccupied in the maze and my surroundings prevented me from having the perspective you had. I want you to start from the top. And please try to be more coherent this time."

"More confetti this time, got it," Pinky nodded. "Well, the techie plopped you in the maze with the other mouse and zoomed right outta there when Layla walked by."

"The new hire?" Brain asked. It was rare for seasoned employees to take interest in rookies, which contributed to the lab's high turnover rate.

"Narf, that's her! It's so lovely of her to clean out our cage!" Pinky exclaimed. And it was even rarer to find employees who had a tiny notion for a lab animal's living conditions. Most people just wanted their paychecks.

"At the cost of our sleep and my plans," Brain muttered. Layla didn't pick them up by their tails, an unusual trait for an ACME employee, but he still disliked how she came in early and disrupted his sleep and brainstorming sessions for new plans. Besides, Pinky did a perfectly adequate job of keeping their cage tidy. He didn't require assistance from humans. "Continue."

"He gave her a rose, but it was smooshy and plastic-y," Pinky's nose wrinkled. "Must've sat down on it too. Said he liked her and wanted a date. Bit old for her if you ask me."

Brain turned away from Pinky, fixing his gaze on the wall above that accursed wastebasket. "And she said no. Then he lost his temper," he finished, his own anger threatening to spill over. But he pushed it back. Not yet. Put the events in chronological order first.

"They yelled an awful lot, Brain," Pinky whimpered. "I could hear them over here, clear as egg yolk. I couldn't hear my wheel squeak, and you know how loud my wheel squeaks. Layla was crying awfully hard and a bunch of the women had to help her leave. Didn't you hear them?"

It was an honest question, but Brain didn't want to answer. Had he really been so focused on taking over the world that he never noticed how this entire mess built up in the first place?

"He snapped that mouse's neck," Brain said, his voice sounding strange to his own ears. "And killed him. Because he couldn't accept her refusal."

By some stroke of dumb luck, Pinky made it out unscathed.

But it could've been Pinky…

It could've easily been Pinky.

"Layla's favorite mouse in the whole wide lab," Pinky whispered, his voice breaking. "She called him Basil. And she doesn't know he's…you know."

Brain didn't reply, turning his attention to his notebook instead. He had to focus on the plan now. And when he ruled the world, he'd have the power to enact laws and reform entire systems to prevent further desecrations and injustices from ever happening again.

And then he remembered the entire foundation for the plan.

_Step One: Send message to the National Wildlife Federation. Appeal to pathos. Example opening statement: "We're just mice. The last of the mus musculus intelligentus subspecies. We watched our brethren die because of human activity." _

_Revise as needed. _

Brain's vision blurred, the paper crinkling in his hands. Someone's voice called to him, but they would've had better luck speaking through a soundless vacuum.

_We're just mice. _

Disposable living models to humans. Cosmic playthings to the universe.

_We're just mice._

Given sentience and no chance to make a difference in the world.

_We're just mice. _

Whose minds and hearts would waste away, as if they never existed at all.

O – O – O – O – O

Brain didn't remember what happened next. One moment he was reading the plan, the next he was in Pinky's warm embrace, surrounded by a pile of shredded paper.

One of Pinky's hands pressed Brain's head to his heart, the fast yet strong _thump-thump-thump _resounding and soothing to his desperate mind. The other hand rubbed gentle circles into Brain's back.

Pinky's chest was damp, but he didn't seem to care. He hummed a little tune, keeping his eyes tilted up to prevent his own glistening tears from falling.

"Poit. You ripped up your own plan thingy," Pinky said, his voice trembling. "And you were angry crying. That mean techie hurt you, Brain. You can get madsad all you want. I'll be here."

Brain pressed his face into Pinky's chest, an act he would consider mortifying under normal circumstances, yet his irrational side won out. "We're just mice," he said, pointedly ignoring Pinky's uncomfortable observations on his emotions. "We hardly matter in the grand scheme of things."

Pinky's mouth curled into an obstinate pout. "You matter to me. You're the smartest mouse I know. The smartest smartie candy ever."

The words were oddly phrased, but sincere. Brain began to feel uncomfortably warm, and he stepped away before his emotions started making his body react in strange ways.

"I…appreciate your assistance, Pinky," Brain admitted. "But tonight's plan isn't feasible. Humans don't care enough to preserve our species' dignity, last living individuals or not."

"Layla cares," Pinky replied. "She'll cry when she finds Basil tomorrow morning. And she won't stop being sad. I wish we could help her not be sad anymore, Brain."

Brain shook his head. "There's only so much you're capable of, Pinky. She might reconsider her employment here because of the lab tech's actions. There's a high probability we may never see her again."

He wouldn't be accomplishing much tonight. But Brain didn't want to sleep yet. Instead he gathered the shredded paper, keeping the written words face down so he didn't have to see the heavy reminders of his mortality.

He was almost through with his self-appointed task when he spotted Pinky drawing closer to the wastebasket. There was a reverence in Pinky's movements as he balanced on his toes, long arms reaching towards the rim. Crumpled paper spilled out as Pinky carefully tipped over the wastebasket.

Brain dropped the scraps of his plan, not caring if he kicked them off the counter as he rushed over to Pinky. Only Pinky would be stupid enough to believe there was something they could do in this awful mess.

Pinky tossed aside a forgotten report, uncovering the corpse, which somehow seemed bigger when he'd run the maze alongside Brain.

The dead mouse was named Basil, according to Pinky. Not a letter and number designation, or a colorful string of profanity when someone tried to use uncooperative animals in their experiments, but a real name.

Pinky dragged the lower half of Basil's body out of the wastebasket, panting heavily since Basil's stiffened paws scraped against the floor and required more exertion to move. Basil's neck wasn't flopping anymore, but it was locked into a crooked, unnatural angle.

"He's stiff, Brain," Pinky said, his voice hitching as he tried to move one paw into a more comfortable position. "How do we help him relax?"

Unwilling to explain the concept of rigor mortis to Pinky, Brain decided to change the subject. "What are you doing, Pinky?"

"He oughta be comfy," Pinky said, a tear slipping down his face. A silent sob wracked his body, but Pinky somehow held on. "The bin isn't a nice place to rest. It's too prickly. And he'll wind up in the big stinky trash mountain. He should sleep somewhere nice."

Brain didn't want to admit it, but Pinky was right. Basil would be thrown into a garbage truck and taken to a landfill to rot in the next few days if they left his body here. Or someone who took contamination procedures seriously would find Basil and throw him into a biohazard bag, like he was just another leftover bacteria culture.

Both disposal methods were unsettling, to say the least.

"There's a beautiful tree outside," Pinky continued. "With roots big enough to play hide and seek under. Do you think he'd like that, Brain?"

Basil wouldn't like anything anymore. He was dead.

But Brain's curt reply died on his tongue when he found his companion watching him with hopeful eyes, looking at him like he held all of life's answers in his hands.

"He'd appreciate it very much, Pinky."

O – O – O – O – O

Basil was laid to rest in a cushioned jewelry box. Pinky wrote the name on the lid in permanent Sharpie. He insisted on it. Brain let him, though it resulted in the top being covered in misspellings. But Pinky's determination shone through.

They sealed the box shut with tape, protecting the body from predators and other forms of harm. Brain made sure to wind the tape around several times, knowing Pinky would be distraught if something managed to pry it open and damage Basil.

Pinky cried during the entire journey to the tree, but he refused to relinquish his hold on the box.

There was a hollow where the trunk connected to the roots. Large enough for Pinky to squeeze himself and the box through, but small enough that nobody else would be able to disturb Basil's final resting place. They'd have to cut down the tree for that, which hopefully wouldn't happen for a very long time.

Brain waited outside the hollow, underneath the vast canopy of the night sky. He didn't look to the stars, as he was prone to do on some nights when he needed to think for a while. There would be plenty of opportunities for him to contemplate his existence in the future.

Pinky crawled out of the hollow, his fur caked with dirt, leaves, and tears. Brain brushed a few leaves off Pinky's fur, letting them flutter gently to the ground.

"Don't worry, Brain," Pinky said, as if Brain was the emotional wreck who required comforting. "The streets are paved with cheese in heaven."

"How unsanitary," Brain muttered.

Pinky giggled, a tiny one that was probably inappropriate for the occasion, but it was enough. He wanted to stay out for a while longer, but Brain had something else he wanted to do before the night was over.

They cleaned themselves in the sink, then Pinky left to make tea with honey and lemon. After an emotional trainwreck of the day and night, Brain was looking forward to a thimble to settle his nerves.

In the meantime, he drew up the termination papers.

_Aggression not conducive for safe workplace. _

The humans would believe it was for harassment, which suited Brain just fine. He refused to let that neanderthal of a lab tech anywhere near Pinky.

He rejoined Pinky on the counter. There were two steaming hot thimbles and several torn sticky notes next to him.

"Layla should know," Pinky said, tongue sticking out as he attempted to spell 'tree'.

"Keep it anonymous," Brain replied.

But he transcribed the message between sips of tea anyway.

Pinky didn't know Layla on a personal level. He would gain no reward, reap no benefits from his actions, yet her feelings mattered to him.

Pinky never shared a cage with Basil, never knew him when he was alive either. Even deceased, Basil's comfort mattered to him.

And Pinky had proven time and time again that Brain mattered to him. Brain could forget, but Pinky never would.

Just a mouse, but an important mouse who deserved the world.

**A/N: When I was in middle school, I went to a summer camp. At some point, the boys' cabin decided to stuff a dead mouse into one of those long Pringles cans and leave it outside of the girls' cabin. I was the first to find it, though I think I just left the can where I found it. I felt pretty bad for the mouse though.**

**I was almost tempted to use that in the story, but poor little Basil suffered enough.**

**Can you tell I love these two by how much I make them cry?**


End file.
